Comment by gexla | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gexla | Hacker News Reader

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> judge him negatively for speaking out

Anything you put out on the internet can be a positive or a negative. This sort of post is not a positive.

Part of the reason software buyers pay good rates (those who do) is because they need to know they are dealing with competent service providers. If the provider is offering services for less than that which would sustain a business (which many cash-strapped freelancers do) then that's a red flag. If I have a critical, high profile project, then I want to know that the person I'm handing it off to is going to be relatively stable. Think about this from an investor perspective, the people involved in the project need to be able to recover financially from a trip to the hospital (as opposed to going homeless).

I need to know you can pay the rent and keep the lights on. If you are one step away from financial disaster, then you're too much of a risk to partner with on my project. That may sound bad, but that's reality.

His review will not look good for taking on better paying work. The people who will take a chance on him are likely the same sort of people who he feels has been screwing him over.

Bottom line, you might be one misstep away from the streets, but that's not information you want to include on a cover-letter.

OK, sure. Charging more gives you access to the better class of clients. At age 23 I started out doing shitty freelance PHP work, included a bunch of fixed-price projects. Later on, at age 26/27, (I worked full-time in-between), I spent a year contracting for digital agencies at twice my 23-year-old rate, and had a much smoother time.

So I know first-hand the benefits of "going up in the world" and getting into a higher-quality network of clients. I now look at websites like ClientsFromHell.com and see freelancers managing their careers really badly, not knowing they could be doing much better.

All that is true but it's not what came through in your original comment. You could have said "Ouch, poor guy, he got shafted, but all of this was avoidable. He should start acting like a business rather than a temp worker, and aim to build up his skills, learn to market himself, and find a better class of clients". Instead, you victim-blamed him, and poured scorn on him for speaking out.

Getting screwed occasionally is a cost of doing business. You price that in. If the business isn't worth it after pricing that in, then you look for another business. There are lots of businesses which have gone down from fraud and there are lots of businesses which eat those expenses and continue doing well. It's a fact of life as an entrepreneur and you deal with it.

That's not being a victim and certainly, you shouldn't play one on the internet in this type of case. If you are pitching a project or a service, you don't include as a footnote "I have been screwed over in the following cases". That's exactly what you are doing when your review comes up with the inevitable Google search (assuming he posted this under his real name).

We also don't know he really got shafted. If we were sitting in a court, there would be two sides presented. We are taking the reviewer's word and there are many details admittedly left out. The review would have been more effective if he were to zero in on one point and analyzed that point. We could then argue both sides of that point. Freelancer.com could potentially make changes on that one point. Then we could steer the conversation to one other point.

Instead, we have a blow-up with the passing of parents, a car wreck, stacked-up bills, depression, potential homelessness and all the times which customer service was "angry" with this person. If we're talking about potential issues, we could probably speculate about all the things which might happen to this person while living on the streets. Gosh, maybe he'll even get assaulted.

I feel for all the people in the world getting screwed over. But these sorts of blow-ups don't help. We should focus on ONE issue.

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